Poem: September 7, 2019

Circles

Fifty-one, yes, undeniably so, and still
I am the boy who wants to sing loud,
who cannot settle his legs and hands,
who interrupts and never finishes his

sentences so much as he weaves them
into some new stopless thought since
inside, where it counts, I'm still a boy
who wants to show off and who hates

to be judged, the boy who is never
bored because he is always recovering
from boredom, bouncing off of what
would stick to me and be so boring!

I am still the boy who falls in love with
everything, who is sentimental about
the relics and and crevices of his life,
who doesn't want to let anything go.

Here, inside my surfaces, I am the boy
who aches to hear certain words echo:
charming, intelligent, adorable, deep.
Who dreams to be tattooed with them.

Unchanged, I see through the film of
this passing world, but cannot be free
of it. I am the boy who wants to follow
all the rules in a world in which no

rules exist. All bravado, this boy,
a moth for joy, attracted to himself,
still the boy who wants to be the best
but never compared to anything else,

a superlative, a truism, circular logic,
a boy, a cosmos, happily alone and
crowded, one kid too full of voices,
a hopeful and rudderless engine. I look

in the mirror and see the boy who returns
to the mirror again and again, so drawn
to all the surfaces he ever remembers
touching, even as they swirl away.